Shechita to Remain Legal in Canada, Minister of Justice Says

Kosher slaughtering “is legal in Canada and will remain so,” Minister of Justice David Fulton told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency yesterday, following his introduction of a draft amendment on humane slaughtering.

The government-sponsored bill, which received its first reading and then was held over until the next session–next summer or fall–for consideration and revision, requires that food animals be rendered unconscious before being killed. However, it excepts shechita under a section which makes the measure inapplicable “where a food animal is slaughtered in accordance with a religious ritual.”

Dr. A.E. Cameron, head of the Canadian Humane Society, which has been pressing a national campaign against inhumane slaughter, said in an interview with the JTA that the society is not anti-Jewish and has specifically excluded kosher slaughtering from the practice it campaigns against.

The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.